We had planned to drive the 3.5 kilometres from the town of Carate to the park entrance, but a lack of a road forced us to park the car at the pulperia just off the road and walk the distance along the soft sand beach. This would mark the beginning of the self-inflicted pain marathon we had so naively looked forward to early in the morning. Donning a fully loaded backpack stuffed with over 40 pounds oftent gear, camping supplies and 10 litres of water, I had officially set myself up for disaster, while Denielle carried a smaller backpack stuffed to the brim with more water and our less than adequate food supplies for the journey. 37 degrees and very high humidity makes one wonder if it is in fact any different than walking inside your own body. The sweat is relentless, even from the beginning. The strong sea breeze is no match for the heavy loads and superfluous clothes. The smell being generated by our bodies is unholy, and really something to behold in the same way one would gawk at a roadside accident. Unfortunately we cannot escape the experience by driving away. After two days of no showers and constant sweating both on the beach and the confined space of our tent, we seemed to have opened some kind of Pandora’s Box of stink that that threatens to remain for the remainder of the trip.
The hike turns out to be 19.5 kilometres in to the ranger station, but we have no map and the trail becomes quite hard to follow in certain places. Thanks to the first 3.5 kilometres on the beach in thick wool socks adorned solely to protect against such things, blisters have already developed on my heels. I double up socks and apply bandages, but the heat and sweat easily negate the attempts of the Gore-Tex lining to dissipate the wetness. What started out as a most enjoyable walk through the jungle and along some of the nicest most remote beaches in the country has now turned into a death march. Knowing we need to cross one big river at some point before the ranger station is the only thing keeping me from pitching my tent on the beach and calling it a day. I’m pretty sure that there is a Geneva convention against carrying 40 pound bags for 20 kilometres in 37 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, and here we are paying for this privilege.
We finally encounter the river after an exhausting 7 hours of walking, and my feet are so sore that I can barely make it across the river with my bare feet on the loose-pebbled bottom. Each step is an excruciating act of mind versus matter, willing myself to proceed despite the pain. I try stepping up the bank on the other side but my foot slides in the pebbles back down to the water, scrapping my grossly wrinkled feet even more. Denielle laughs at my pathetic attempt to exit the river, not knowing the burning fire that engulfs my feet with each step. The straps of the backpack cut deep into my shoulders and upper back and I reach out to the ground to keep from falling as the weight shifts with my slide down into the river. I manage to get up, take off my pack and use my hands to shuffle myself up the bank like a street invalid with no legs, where I can now rest my feet atop my back pack. Imagine sitting in a hot tub for 8 hours and that is what my feet look like having been enclosed in my boot sauna soaked with sweat this whole time. Wrinkles like a satellite photo of the Grand Canyon splay across my feet in every direction, while the blisters on my heels that have opened up and reformed countless times send a white hot burn sensation to my brain. My body desperately wants to stop, but we need to press on as soon it will be dark, and one does not want to be lost in the jungle in the dark. I continue on the trek, still not knowing how far we have to go before being finished because we have no map. My flip flops ease the pressure on my heels, and the pain on the bottoms of my feet slowly dissipates as they dry with each step, but my body is exhausted from the daylong effort in the heat and humidity and finally the ranger station appears like an oasis through a parting of the trees. We have arrived, and now I can hardly walk. How am I going to make the same trip back the very next day?
We sign in, get our tent set up along the grass runway and have a meal consisting of cold beans from a can and cold mixed vegetables from a can split between the two of us. We would have eaten three times that much, but only had a peanut butter and jam sandwich and two granola bars each for the return trip. Apparently Denielle thinks I haven’t lost enough weight yet on the trip. Just as the sun is setting we finish our supper and could quite easily pass out from exhaustion now at only 6 in the evening. Denielle gets up and finds out that there are showers, so she goes to have one and brush her teeth. I go after, but find that my towel evidently was not packed, so I have to borrow Denielle’s tiny sham wow that is already wet. I would later find out that she grabbed my towel by mistake, leaving hers sitting dry in her bag while we both actually used mine. Not showering for two days before that and having the heat and humidity of the jungle had left me smelling worse than most things one could find in the jungle itself. Not to mention the salt residue from surfing in the ocean had left my skin sticky and gross, which played havoc with my groin area throughout the day, forcing me to adopt an unusual walk to ease the pain. Only those of the male persuasion whom have walked in wet swimming trunks from the ocean can relate to what I’m talking about. I would apply bandages along my inner thighs in the morning and hope for the best.
While showering I spotted what I thought was a snake sticking its head out close to a light on the ceiling, so I went back to the tent to grab the camera. Returning with the camera I found the animal had moved, and turned out to be a very large gecko. On my way back to the tent I was informed of some tree frogs and a snake that had been found on the edge of the compound, so I went to have a look. A small red eyed tree frog, a larger tree frog, and a very cool white and black striped snake where biding their time amongst the tall plants close to the other outhouse. It’s great when other people have guides, because you just go up to what they’re looking at and get the same experience for free.
We awoke at 6 am, had some granola for breakfast and packed up the tent. We walked down the runway back to the trail, with hopes that our tired and beaten bodies would make the trek. A little ibuprofen and careful bandaging goes a long way. I had also managed to adjust the straps on my backpack to fit a little better, and opted to wear flip flops to keep from getting the trench foot from the day before. 20 km in flip flops bought at a Costa Rican grocery store gets a lot of funny looks from the people wearing all the latest and greatest gear for their jungle trek. While we were walking Denielle commented on how she had removed three tiny little spiders from her leg that morning that had their heads dug into her skin. Looking down on my own arm I now noticed one of these “little spiders” that she was talking about. Never having had ticks before, I had always been quite frightened of them. Just the idea of some creature crawling about your body without your knowledge and then burrowing in to your most private of places and feeding, no gorging on your blood, is quite disheartening. I should have known after listening to the conversation in the tent next to us the night before. “Show me on this carrot where you removed the three ticks today...” Yikes! Seeing this tiny little guy on my arm after dealing with so many other kinds of bugs on our trip didn’t seem like such a big deal at the moment. So I grabbed his tiny little head between my finger nails and pulled him out. Altogether we removed 16 ticks between the two of us, some dug in, some just crawling around looking for a nice spot. At least we’re supporting the local ecosystem.
Despite the tick problem, we had a really good pace and were making good time, seeing lots of spider monkeys, spiders, lizards, and the occasional brown snake that darts in front of me across the path. Spider monkeys abound throughout the jungle, swinging from tree to tree with the greatest of ease. Much more acrobatic than the other types of monkeys, these are the most enjoyable to watch so far. Long arms and a very active prehensile tail make the fast canopy crossings seem effortless and breathtaking at the same time like crowds waiting for a trapeze artist to miss the bar and fall into the net. But these monkeys have no net and still make great leaps from precarious branches high above the forest floor. It would also seem that mosquitoes follow these aerial acrobats throughout the forest as we soon become pin cushions for the flying menaces while our heads are turned skywards for the monkey show. Or perhaps it is just that we only stop for long enough for the mosquitoes to track us down when we are in the presence of monkeys. But our goal of the day was the mighty tapir. Almost ten years ago a tapir peed on my friend Ray at the San Jose zoo from a remarkable distance. He denies that it happened, but Peter and I know the real story. That was the only other time that I had ever seen a tapir. We had encountered the rather large and unusual tracks of the great beast along the beach the previous day and even some fresh ones this very morning, but knew that our chances of seeing the mysterious mammal in person were slight.
Rounding a corner I spotted something large and black in amongst the plants and then looked to see a number of hikers stopped looking at the same spot. This must be a tapir, our target trophy of the day. Sure enough, we quietly walked forward and saw the rear end of this very large, very male tapir. Now prior experience of the distance with which a tapir can urinate had me staying well back for rear of getting the golden tapir shower that Ray had encountered nearly a decade before. Denielle saw that the path kept going along and curved up towards the tapir appeared to be going, so we quickly moved over to try and have the animal come towards us. Tapirs (tape-ear) are very unusual and quite hard to describe. They are ungulates, along with elephants, cows, pigs, deer, and moose, have three large toes, are a little bit bigger than a very large pig, with noses like a small elephant trunk. This one seemed quite large, coming up to over my waist. It slowly approached where I squatted with the camera, sniffing the air with its unusual nose in my direction while it plucked vegetation and fruit from the ground. To get close to the tapir, you must be like the tapir. Apparently not showering for a few days and sweating profusely in the jungle must make you smell like a tapir, because it kept coming towards me to investigate. I got some very good, very close pictures as the beast stood not more than two meters from me. I decided this was close enough and didn’t want to discover what the tapir would do to or with me if I had stayed, so I got up and retreated back to the trail.
We continued along at our fast pace, with renewed energy from the large animal encounter. It was no jaguar sighting, but it is what jaguars eat, and is one of the “if you’re lucky you’ll get to see...” kind of animals. We made it back to the car in just under six hours, much better than the seven and a half the day before, especially considering the state we were both in the night before. Arriving at our car however, we were approached by an old man who owned the property across from where we had parked. He said that we were going to get him sued for parking there. I thought he was joking at first, but soon realized that he was serious. He told us of the ongoing litigation with the lady that owned the road behind where we had parked, and that he had had nothing but nightmares dealing with her for the last few years, and that any time someone parked here it gave her ammunition for future lawsuits. We gave him our information and signed a statement saying that he did not give us permission to park there. We weren’t blocking the road and didn’t see it as being a problem, but hopefully he doesn’t have anything negative happen as a result. We’re in the clear because there’s nothing saying you can’t park where we parked and there were no tickets or official notices issued that could come back to us. Anyway.
Jumping back in the car, Denielle opened up a can of refried beans and spoon fed me like a baby while I raced along the roads in our rally car, splashing through river crossings and sliding around corners in hopes of making it back to Dominical for the evening. We needed to find Nicole who had been in Spanish school all week and try and figure out our plans for the next week. It was sad leaving behind such a beautiful place and such great waves, but civilization and showers were beckoning. We made great time and got a room for the night, however we were unable to find Nicole. Sleep came quickly and we renewed our search the next morning, and finally tracked her down in the town of Dominicalito, just south of main Dominical, walking along the beach. So now we’re just trying to figure out a place to stay for the next week here in Dominical, and then it’s off towards Panama on the Caribbean side. We might venture to Manuel Antonio National Park tomorrow for the day, and then it’s just relaxing and surfing on the waist high waves. Tough life.
Tyler.
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